Hang town
“For a lot of people, Hanged “George” is a symbol of law, order, and justice, and they don’t want to see that taken away,” she said.
“We are a small community that needs to heal. People coming to our town and forcing the stripping down of our historical context is not going to bring that peace, only eternal resentment,” Taylor wrote in a text. “
Get the “Oxbow Incident”, either read the book or watch the movie…
Vigilantes: They were prevalent during the Gold Rush….And they killed thousands of Native Americans.
One victim of vigilante “Justice” was my Great Great Grandfather who was lynched for being married to a white woman in Texas.
My Great Great Grandfather was a Cherokee.
That’s right, his crime was being married to a white woman. He also was charged, tried and hung by a bunch of vigilantes, clothed in confederate uniforms.
In the Ox Bow Incident Mexicans and whites were lynched because they allegedly stole cattle…as it turns out, the mob hangs the wrong people.
The book is a really about the rule of law, and due process, that is a civilized attempt to bring justice.
A mob is not a jury. Frontier “justice” was never justice. It was murder!
But this colorful citizen in Placerville, decides this hanging was “colorful”…indicative of Pioneer justice, a symbol of Law N Order.
There that phrase is once again….the President of the United States just uttered those words in reaction to the Black Live Matter protests…Law n Order?
It was murder. And these were the victims of murder by mob in those days in order: 1. Native Americans: 130,000 dead from 1850 to 1870. 2. Chinese; hundreds killed from 1850 to 1900. 3. African Americans same thing. 4. Innocent victims of gold fever…the rest of us!
Number 4 is the “colorful” aspect of the Gold Rush (there wasn’t much) that the idiot from Placerville is supporting. The ecological disaster that is California was a major result of the abomination that we call the Gold Rush!
This “colorful” part of California history, saw the wanton destruction of water system that ruined millions of miles of watershed, drove the salmon almost into extinction, created copper mines and mercury mines that are STILL killing people downstream. It saw the wanton destruction of Naive American people. It still sees a breast cancer rate from Redding to Sacramento that is off the charts from the pollution that still runs through the Sacramento, American etc rivers…
Think not? Go to Redding and look at Kutrus Lake…a lake that was created when billions of square feet of sand and gravel were taken from a bend in the river to build Shasta Dam, that was built to stop the erosion of the Sacramento Valley that was filling up San Francisco Bay!
The damage of the Gold Rush far outpaced the positive benefits. The colorful history of murder and greed that destroyed the countryside and killed innocent people is the real history of California…In short the Gold Rush is a tired and horrible aspect of California History.
But rural areas, where most of the damage was done to the ecology, for some reason worship this “Pioneer Past” while people still die for the pollution of mercury etc that is in the drinking water
My first wife died of breast cancer, downstream in Redding from the Iron Mountain Mine, the worst “Super Fund Pollution Site” in the United States. Breast cancer is at epidemic numbers downstream from this superfund site.
THAT IS THE REAL LEGACY OF THE GOLD RUSH! IT IS NOT QUAINT, IT ISN’T PRETTY AND IT SURE AS HELL IS NOT WORTH CELEBRATING!
So Placerville, is a hang town, that celebrates vigilante justice….AND THE UNNECESSARY DEATHS OF MANY PEOPLE!